


Three Mistakes, or Denial is Not Just a River in Egypt

by Celestos (Seruspica)



Series: The 95Verse [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Coming Out, Complicated Relationships, Everyone Is In Love with Each Other, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Multi, OT3, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 07:30:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9374525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seruspica/pseuds/Celestos
Summary: Somewhere along the line, the thought of having a fling with his best friend’s ex had probably been a cause for alarm bells. Realising what eight years of silence and conflict truly meant was never part of the plan. Sequel to ‘Ninety-Five Minutes’, featuring all three of these losers being in love with each other. Hesitantshipping.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for two requests on Tumblr to celebrate 200 followers. Two anons wanted stuff - one wanted Asuka and Shou in the 95verse, another wanted Hesitant OT3. Well, it's kind of my endgame ship for the main trio in this 'verse, and I'd promised to write in it again... so here it is.
> 
> Set in the months after 'Ninety-Five Minutes' - the characters are around 22 years old.
> 
> Slightly edited since the original tumblr post, just tweaked the tenses. Why I wrote the original in the present tense, I'll never know.

It takes two months for the fog of the first time to clear.

It takes two months for Shou to see sense. Two months - two deluded, confused months, to stop in the midst of ignoring the pain and to breathe; to realise that something is wrong, and that it isn’t cleared up just by being in Asuka’s arms, her lips on his and there being even slight heat in between them.

It’s far from a snap. It’s gradual, and it hurts once he realises. There’s a bitter sting in his mouth. The ache spreads. The kiss turns to acid. The taste is all wrong.

The whole feeling is artificial. His hands move only by reflex. His head can’t think straight, and it’s not because of her leaning against him, pushing him back with a sudden thump against the wall. It’s not her fault, he realises - it’s his, all his; it’s his guilt eating away at his lungs and making him choke as she kisses him. It’s not like the last time. It never will be.

He wants to fall down.

Asuka stops. Whether it’s the way he presses his head back against the cold of the wall or the way his wrist falls limp in her grasp, she doesn’t press on. Suddenly, there is air. He can breathe again without breathing in _her_.

Her scent has never been overwhelming. Sometimes, her perfume is a little strong, but those times are rare, and he prefers her without any perfume at all. The times she wears it are few. He had never had to complain.

He never would, he knows in the pit of his stomach. _I’m never going to say it._

“Shou?”

Her voice, stark against the silence in the rest of the room, rings out like a bell. The toll is painful. She has noticed; he knows. He has nowhere to hide.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs. His gaze dips down. He cannot bear to look at her, not when he knows he has disappointed her like this. Even as she backs away, the weight of surrender presses down on his chest.

He hates it, bitterly so. He hates it.

“What’s wrong?” She asks, gesturing with one hand to the couch. He isn’t sure what it means at first - does she want to skip to thinking of nothing, or is everything pushing her down? Does she want to talk or to do the exact opposite - to fall down and forget the world for a few minutes at least, just her and him and…

Judai’s upstairs, he remembers, biting his lip. He had not come downstairs since - so the clock says - an hour ago. The silence above is tell-tale.

“Here,” Asuka repeats, sitting down. “It’s all right. What’s wrong?”

He has not choice but to obey. He is no animal, but he knows he cannot escape her, and lets her take over for him. She has respected him for two months, and even before that. 

Some part of him, even as he is in this state, frustrated and flustered and a world away, consumed by the feeling of guilt, is still listening. He takes those few steps and sits by her side, looking down.

A sigh racks through his lungs, and he swallows the bitterness. “…Do you ever feel like you’re cheating on someone you’re not even dating?”

It’s the strangest way he could have put it. The moment the words leave his mouth, he wishes he could take them all back. He closes his eyes, preparing for what he knows will be disgust, or hatred, or her accusing him of having used her for two months; for her outrage, knowing that he had lied to her when he did not think he had - knowing that he had failed her.

The strike never comes. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Shou mumbles, shaking his head. It’s too much to look her in the eye. “It’s just… I don’t know how best to describe it.”

“What’s wrong? Is there… someone else?”

“No. I mean, there’s not, but…” He frets, hands toying with one another in a weak attempt to lie, or to hide, or just to escape. He knows it is useless. There are no ways out now; only her, only her next to him, with the truth ready to spill. “I just kind of… what even is it…”

He cannot find the words. What he knows about himself is nothing more than a series of pieces that he has struggled to connect in the midst of the patchwork of his and her brief relationship; since one half-drunken evening when neither of them were quite thinking straight to the day he kissed her sincerely, to the crash and burn that was now.

“Is it Judai?”

His heart skips a beat. His breaths jump from here to there, shallow to deep until he loses control for a second. For the length of a heartbeat, he does not feel like himself.

The truth makes little sense, even to him. It is the truth, nonetheless. It is scrambled and messy and broken up on his tongue.

“No - yes, but… it’s not quite that with him, but it is, and it’s not and…”

Asuka interrupts. He looks up. Guilt tugs at his insides.

“It’s all right. Just explain it your way. I’m not going to be angry.” Her eyes are not full of fire. They feel alive, far from the stony coldness he had seen in them when she came home from work to see them, almost falling down onto the couch with exhaustion. They are soft like toffee and calm like the summer sunset, and something about them soothes more than inflames, even when she is like this, and he knows he has just said something bad - so bad, he knows, that he can never take back.

It was not something he had ever wanted to say to anyone he had thought of calling a ‘girlfriend’.

“I feel like I’m… betraying him somehow. Like, _something_ about this. Something just isn’t quite right.“

He swallows. _What isn’t right? Why can’t you get it out of yourself?_ The voice of his consciousness pulls at him and screams. _What’s wrong with you?_

_It’s right,_ he realises. _What is wrong with me? Why can’t I look at her, and tell her outright? What do I even say? What even is this? Why? Who, how? Why am I saying all of this?_

He curses softly. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s all right.” Asuka shakes her head. Her hand trails up to his shoulder, holding it in a way that makes him think of Judai over the years; from telling him to do his best on a rough exam to reassuring him after his first case of heartbreak.

_Heartbreak? No, that’s not quite it._

“It’s like… I’m not meant to be feeling like this. I’m sorry. I mean, he liked _you_ , and… I’m just his friend.”

She leans in. “Do you like him?”

It takes a few silent moments for him to speak again. He calls back to the past. He thinks of Judai’s smile, his warm, supporting hand, the way he would always keep his chin up when he could think of no other solution than to fall down and cry. There were moments in school, and when they came to first move in together, and the horror of when Judai had lost consciousness in the park, three years ago, and when all hell had broken loose with what had changed since that day

“Maybe,” he says, a little more surely. “Maybe I do.”

There were never any boys in his life, not like girls. Girls came and went in his mind, like small sparks. Girls were warm and sweet - but just like sparks, they came and went, fading out as quickly as they had come in to his line of sight. He had always felt something for girls. They had always been sudden and bright, like small fires.

He tries to cover it up in a panic. “…But I’ve never really thought about guys. Not _seriously._ I-I mean, it’s always been girls. And… I like you. I really do. I like _you._ ”

It isn't a lie. Asuka had stayed in his heart and on his mind for far longer than any girl he had known. He had never let himself think about boys.

Judai had been there all along. He had been there for years, and Shou had never had to think hard about him. He had always been out of the question. Even when Judai came out to him, in the quiet of his room back when both of them were still living with their parents’, he had never considered it, not seriously.

He had tried to forget how his heart had leapt, just for a second, when Judai had told him that gender meant little to him.

It hadn’t been much at the time - but how he had panicked, fearing that he would lose him any day, any minute, when his condition had surfaced three years ago. He had made himself sick with worry, and cried at the thought of being…

 _…no, not alone,_ he realises. _I was crying, thinking that I would be without him._

He had been there all along. Looking back, he knew it was true. He had loved him.

Asuka’s hand nestles around his shoulders, coming a little closer to offer him a slight hug. The feeling in his stomach does not subside; he still cannot face her. He knows he has hurt her. The truth had come out, painfully so, straight in front of a girl who he feels probably hates him by now, knowing he had most likely been lying to her.

“It’s all right. I didn’t know for ages, either.” 

“Huh?”

She lowers her voice, not quite whispering, but saying it just a little quieter; like a small secret. “You know my first date was with a girl?”

His eyes widen. He had never asked her, and never suspected.

“It’s true,” she continues.” I was in high school. We broke up after two months, but it was all right. She’s engaged now.”

He can’t help but feel happy, even if she is a stranger. His own worries are still too heavy for him to smile. “Guess she got lucky.”

“Yeah. I don’t mind, though. We’re still friends. On Facebook, anyway.”

He catches wind of a small laugh under her breath.

“Did you date any more girls after that?”

“No. There was one guy at university, but he was the biggest Daddy’s-boy I ever met. Couldn’t wait to break up with him. What about you?”

Shou pauses to think. The girls of the past are brief flashes, most of their faces forgotten. Only a few surface in the mess of his memories.

“Well, there was this one girl at high school. I mean, I used to get these crushes on girls all the time, and then she…”

He stops mid-sentence, the image of her becoming clear in his mind. Dyed-blonde hair, eyes like a forest, the blush on her cheeks as rosy as blossoms; her name comes to his lips, and he mouths it, recalling the time he spent gazing at her across the classroom, his breaths hitching at every small smile.

“Hm?”

He comes back to reality. She is gone; retreated far out of reach, far into the past. “Her family moved. She might have been… you know. My first.”

“Your first crush? Or first love?”

It’s a little awkward to remember, but he cannot get it out of his mind any more, not now. It is too late. He has already realised - and Asuka has, too. It’s clear, in the way her voice rings out, softly so, and how her arm wraps around his shoulders, as firm and warm as a certain old friend.

“The first one that wasn’t just a week-long crush. That… this sounds so cruel. I’m sorry. I should shut up.”

She doesn’t need to hear any of this. They aren’t dating, not quite - they aren’t much more than a pair of friends who went a little far a few times. She had dated his best friend, and he was in love with her, but his heart had wanted someone else, all along, and what it wanted now he could not tell.

“It’s all right. There’s nothing cruel about it. It’s all in the past.”

“Some of it, anyway,” he croaks, throat sore.

“Hm?”

“I don’t know if I’d have gotten over that if it hadn’t been for Judai.”

He is upstairs, he thinks. Upstairs, either asleep, or… _out of it._ He still hasn’t found a word for the lapses Judai falls into. Knowing there was something more to it than simply losing consciousness only made it harder to understand. Was Judai really ever unconscious, or was it only his body losing touch while his conscience happened to wander elsewhere? What if he was listening to everything he had confessed - to what Asuka was saying to him?

What if he knew?

“He’s important to you. I know.”

“It’s just that… _he’s just always been there._ I promised him I’d stay no matter what happens. Even when… when the whole fainting thing started. I-I tried to be there.”

He had done what he could, even before Judai had told him the truth. He could not bring himself to be angry at him for the secret.

“You still are. You’re doing a good job of it.”

“But I feel like I’m _cheating,_ even if we are just friends.”

He had tried to be faithful to the girls he had dated. The longest relationship had lasted for months, longer than Judai and Asuka’s, even when the spark he had longed for at the beginning had long since faded away. The girl had deserved better, and he had let her go in the end. It had been bitter. He had banished himself to his room and refused to go out for days at a time, still hearing the same old, _I’m sorry, it’s me_ , like a broken record, his own voice hammering into his brain.

“Are you worried about him? I understand.”

“It’s not that. I mean, I am worried about him, but that’s not it. Maybe it’s… well, maybe I might actually like him.”

He forces it out of himself in desperation. _There,_ he thinks. _Now I definitely can’t take it all back. I’ve just told you I’m gay for my best friend._

At the same time, the thought of pushing Asuka out felt wrong in his head. It would be lying if he told her that he felt nothing whenever he looked at her, or touched her. She had been different for a long time. She had decided to stay friends after she and Judai decided to not get back together. She had been close enough to know about Judai’s secret - even if she had found out unintentionally, in a panic, and by unconventional means.

“Then you like him.” He looks up, somewhat surprised, and finds a smile resting there on her lips. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

_But there is,_ Shou knows. Things aren't quite making sense. He knows he cannot not push her out. “But I like you.”

“Hm?"

“I… I like you,” he repeates, the words sure this time. He is not lying.

He stays there, looking up and waiting for something to happen. Would she slap him for all of the drama he had caused? Would she walk away and tell him to get a hold on reality? Would she tell him, _him or me,_ and force him to name one lest he lose the other?

Something in his chest feels like a tug at the thought. Asuka is beautiful, and kind, and strong, like no other. She is not Judai, but she still has a place in his heart - one that he feels is as tough and taken as the one Judai had subconsciously been occupying for years.

“I understand. I do, too. And, mind if I share something?” Asuka’s smile stays, trembling only for the slightest of moments.

“What?”

“I care a lot about you, but I still wonder what would have been if I hadn’t broken up with Judai like that. With _what happened._ ”

He understands in an instant. He had seen her rush in, panicking and heart unable to slow down enough for her to no longer hear its beating. She had called Judai’s name, and he had been able to do nothing but cower. He had been just as scared as she was - more so, he realised, maybe more, seeing the wild look in her eyes and how she almost cried out, putting one and the other together in her mind at the sight of Judai, unconscious and helpless - and honest, painfully so.

Judai had barely been able to speak the morning after the chaos. How Asuka had felt in the hours after, he could only guess.

“I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. You didn’t do anything bad. And you still aren’t.”

He wants to ask her how she can still be saying these things. He wants to shout, to scream at her to say that she hates him.

What he can get out of his lungs is nothing more than an ordinary voice. “But I said all that…”

“There’s nothing wrong with any of it.” Her hand on his shoulder squeezes a little. She reminds him of a big sister, just for a second, one that he never had. His brother had always been somewhat colder.

Judai had always been warm, his own smile bright like sunshine. “You think he’s going to mind? What if he finds out?”

“You’re the one who knows him better than me. How long have you known him?”

Shou objects. “You were his girlfriend.”

“For four months,” Asuka states.

“Yeah, but you knew things that I - “

“Ssh. That doesn’t matter.” She hushes him, one finger drawn to his lips. She has done it before, playfully so. This time is more gentle, more motherly, the tension not enough to control.

“Huh?” He exclaims, lips just moving under the hush.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s not how long he and I were together. It’s how much you mean to each other. I love him, and so do you. That makes both of us important in this.“

“But I love you, too,” Shou says again. He won’t let her forget it.

“And so do I,” Asuka mirrors. “I love you, too. I love you, and I love Judai just as much. It isn’t a competition. Not if we all happen to work out like that.”

Shou’s eyes widen. Some part of him still waits for a slap or a scorn, but his heart leaps upon hearing it. “Really?”

She nods at him with sincerity, or what he hopes really is. “Really. Isn’t that right? Come on, how long have you been standing there?”

At first, it doesn’t click in Shou’s mind - and then it does, so hard his heart almost leaps into his throat, as he looks up and sees the familiar eyes, and the mop of brown hair, peering out from the side of the doorway. He feels that same feeling rise, just like before, of wanting to sink into the softness of the couch and letting it swallow him whole like a beast, but forces it down.

There is no use in hiding.

“Not that long,” Judai laughs. “But hey, if it really works out…”

Shou can’t help but laugh too - laugh at himself, and at Judai, and at how he had panicked over something that had turned out so warm and inviting. It feels strange, his face flushing red with embarrassment all of a sudden as Judai tackles him down into a hug that almost crushes him for a second, before he sinks into it. Asuka laughs.

His first mistake, he knows, had been thinking of limits.

He thinks of the delirium, of the fog of the first time he and Asuka had taken things a little too far, behind Judai’s back. He had not been thinking quite straight, and neither had she, and there had been no use ever hiding it from Judai. He would most likely have found out - or had known for some time already, he realised with a blush. If Judai had ever woken up in either of their bodies, he had probably already come to the conclusion.

No more lying, he decides. No more of these pointless mistakes. No more lying.

He had already let himself lie to two others. With them had been more and more lies, to many more of the people he knew. Keeping his hands and his heart wound up in chains, behind closed doors and far out of reach, had been his second mistake.

The third of his mistakes had been simple denial.

He would not let that denial take over again, he swears to himself, as Asuka reaches to give him a small kiss on the cheek. He would say things out loud this time. He would have to be braver, not just in front of Asuka, but in front of Judai, too. Judai had been brave for all of the years he had known him - and he had always been braver, and would always be. He had not been able to keep his secret for as long as Shou had let his fester away, deep inside, to the point where it had almost driven him mad.

The secret had come out, just like that, faster than Judai’s one had. He knows he can’t let himself cling to those mistakes, not any more.

He looks back at Asuka, and then into Judai’s eyes.

Somewhere in the midst of that day, he lets go of the mistakes at last.


End file.
